A VALE of Evesham plant centre boss who usually uses £2-£3,000 worth of water a year has been sent a bill for a massive £95,516.

Then to add to his problems, when Philip Insley, of the Proculture Plant Centre, Knowle Hill, Evesham, tried to query the bill, he was put through to a call centre where he became so frustrated that he put the phone down.

"Obviously, I am not going to pay the bill," Mr Insley said. "I'll wait until I get a threatening letter or something else when I may do something about it."

Mr Insley is pretty sure he knows what happened. His water meter reads up to 9,999 metres and when it ran over and started again, Severn Trent Water assumed the meter ran up to 99,999, resulting in the bill for an extra 90,000 cubic meters of water he has not used. "It is a massive amount of water," he said. "I rang Severn Trent to query the bill and after 15 minutes I got put through to a call centre. I couldn't get any sense out of the people there at all and so in the end I just left it and put the phone down."

Mr Insley said he was very surprised that the water company had not got some sort of monitoring system whereby extraordinary high bills were spotted as they went through the system and double checked before they went out.

Severn Trent spokesman Jo Smith said: "We apologise for the error which was caused by an incorrect meter reading which should really have been picked up. We will be sending out a corrected bill in the next few days."

She said the ST call centres were based in Derby and Coventry, not abroad.

The case is the third of its kind reported in the Journal in as many weeks .

Two weeks ago we told how Pamela Abbotts and her brother Dave of Pershore Road, Hampton received a bill around £100 higher than usual. And last week we carried the story of pensioner Elaine Aoslin from Saxonbury who was disputing a bill for £16,000.